Soon after the arrival of his exalted guest, King Ferdinand with his family, a great number of priests, and a strong escort, moved his residence from the capital to Gaeta. The modified Constitution, substituted for the first charter after the events of the 15th of May, was still nominally in force; Parliament had met during the summer, but the King solved the riddle of governing through his ministers, on purely retrograde principles, without paying more heed to the representatives of the nations than to the benches on which they sat. Prorogued on the 5th of September, Parliament was to have met on the 30th of November, but when that date approached, it was prorogued again to the 1st of February. 'Our misery has reached such a climax,' wrote Baron Carlo Poerio, 'that it is enough to drive us mad. Every faculty of the soul revolts against the ferocious reactionary movement, the more disgraceful from its execrable hypocrisy. We are governed by an oligarchy; the only article maintained is that respecting the taxes. The laws have ceased to exist; the Statute is buried; a licentious soldiery rules over everything, and the press is constantly employed to asperse honest men. The lives of the deputies are menaced. Another night of St Bartholomew is threatened to all who will not sell body and soul.' Ferdinand only waited till he had recovered substantial hold over Sicily to do away with even the fiction of parliamentary government. Messina had fallen in September, though not till half the city was in flames, the barbarous cruelties practised on the inhabitants after the surrender exciting the indignation of the English and French admirals who witnessed the bombardment. This was the first step to the subjection of Sicily, but not till after Syracuse and Catania fell did the King feel that there was no further cause for anxiety--the taking of the capital becoming a mere question of time. He was so much pleased at the fall of Catania that he had a mock representation of the siege performed at Gaeta in presence of the Pope and of half the sacred college. On the 13th of March Prince Torelli handed the President of the Neapolitan Chamber of Deputies a sealed packet which contained a royal decree dissolving Parliament. Naples was once more under an irresponsible despotism. The lazzaroni of both the lower and higher classes, if by lazzaroni may be understood the born allies of ignorance, idleness and bigotry, rejoiced and were glad. Nor were they few. Unlike the Austrians in the north, Ferdinand had his party; the 'fidelity of his subjects' of which he boasted, was not purely mythical. Whether, considering its basis, it was much to boast of, need not be discussed.